Thursday, June 18, 2009

Sometimes we find our way…

Completed. Done. Finito Benito. Play number seven has been wrapped up and put to bed.

… well, except for revisions/rewrites/proofings, etc. but that first draft is history, baby!

It started out as a play about my father – well, about losing my father. It’s a play about a mother and son and how they relate when the father he never knew and the husband who could never commit dies and leaves them together. But then, it turned into more than that. Much more.

Because the father couldn’t commit to the mother, it also became a play about loving someone who could never love you back, about longing for that love, spending your whole life missing what you never had and wishing for the impossible. So, though it was far from my original intent, it also became a play about Rosa.

There are still days when I can hear her voice. There are days when I wonder how she is. And I feel horrible about it. Guilt creeps up and smacks me in the head. Because I have someone now who loves me. Her name is Vicky. So, this play deals with that horrible possibility that I could have ended up spending my life striving for something that wasn’t real and I realize that missing her now and then is nothing compared to the mistake I almost made.

And that’s what we do as writers. We take what was and write about what could have been. We take we didn’t happen and write about if it did. We worry away at possibilities and create impossibilities. And we end up with characters we feel very sorry for – we regret the things we do to them, even if they aren’t real, because they have to face the horrible realities of our imaginations.

If I had stayed with Rosa, I would be living a life of ice-cold neglect and empty loneliness. The alternative cost me years of regret that was nearly intolerable but it was still a better price to pay, in the long run. And I got to find Vicky, which made it worthwhile, for the most part.